The Call of Duty franchise made a habit of breaking records, usually its own. Modern Warfare 2, for example set a record by making $310 million in its first 24 hours. That record was broken by Black Ops, which made $360 million. Modern Warfare 3then made $400 million on its first day and went on to reach the $1 billion mark one day sooner than James Cameron’s Avatar. Then, finally, Black Ops II was able to hit $500 million day one.

All of these are huge numbers, summer blockbuster grand total numbers reached in ONE single day (with pre-orders included, of course). But all of those numbers have been blasted out of the water now.

It’s being reported that Rockstar Games’ Grand Theft Auto V has scored a jaw-dropping $800 million day one total.

To put it in perspective, that’s $300 million more than the previous Black Ops II record, $200 million more than the seemingly untouchable $600 million domestic record Titanic held for 12 years, and $150 million more than the almost $750 million domestic total Avatar hit to dethrone Titanic. In ONE day! The mind, it boggles.

As always it has to be said that this is a video game that costs $60 compared to however much the average movie ticket is these days. Then again, many more people are out seeing movies than are playing video games.

Either way, congrats to Rockstar on the huge numbers! On to…Red Dead Redemption 2???

Very impressive one day record for video game sales! Never the less, the difference between “day one” of games sales versus movie tickets is not fair. Gamers can buy game, go home and play with the upper limit on revenue being restricted by how many copies of a game are available for sale at launch, unrestricted by time. For movies, the upper limit on revenue is restricted by number of seats available per showing multiplied by number of showings per day. Seating capacity and run time of the movie are hard limits that video games are not subject to. Video games are also offered up for pre-sale weeks and months ahead of time whereas movie tickets may be offered up pre-sale a lot closer to the actual release date, if at all. The shorter window for sales leading up to day 1 also likely has an impact on sales. The goal of a game studio is to sell out of all their inventory as quickly as possible so they can guarantee their profits and move on to the next project. The goal of theaters is to extend the availability of a movie beyond day one because they get larger cuts of the revenue as weeks progress while continuing to sell overpriced concessions on the side. Won’t argue that $800 Million isn’t impressive but the paths to $800 Million are completely different and for different reasons.